Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)
It’s my understanding, after thirty seconds of cursory research, that Warner Brothers gave director Joe Dante the keys to the kingdom for The New Batch. Dante wasn’t interested in another gremlins movie, the studio tried to proceed without him, nothing went anywhere, so they granted him the right to do whatever he wished with the property. The result is probably the most anarchic picture Joe Dante has ever made. The original Gremlins is a witty, surprisingly vicious mating of Frank Capra, Steven Spielberg, and every monster movie Dante has ever seen. Gremlins 2: The New Batch is lighter, more self-aware (the outright horror dialed down), and even more insane. The pretense of human feeling, that leftover E.T. pathos that executive producer Spielberg always seems to instill (even, most ridiculously, in Transformers) has been dropped, any conventional three act structure discarded.
The New Batch sets itself a daunting task: to sustain the delirious, deranged cotton candy high of the first film at its best for the entire running time. This Dante picture, made at the height of an earlier wave of blockbuster testosterone fever, could cynically be reduced to the formula that was on all ambitious studio execs at the time. Dante had essentially given Warner Brothers Die Hard with Gremlins, or, more accurately, a tongue in cheek screw you to everyone who wanted a Die Hard with Gremlins. Or, even more accurately, an affectionate tongue in cheek screw you to everyone who wanted a Die Hard with Gremlins. The trick that Dante pulls in picture after picture is an affectionate, silly, satirical vibe that somehow manages tonal coherence. The New Batch fully plays to Dante’s strengths, a seemingly never ending trip-wire invention laced with an intoxicating love of movies that many don’t take too seriously.
One could draw parallels between The New Batch and Batman Returns, which seems to have been made under similar “the first for you, the second for me” circumstances, but the truth is, while the Burton films have an admirable personality that’s lacking in most expensive filmmaking, they don’t age that well. The New Batch mostly holds, melding a surreal, bent, soul consuming work environment that could have informed Office Space with a mischievous post-modern sensibility that precedes Tarantino’s later films by more than a decade. The picture even sports Christopher Lee before it was cool to cast Christopher Lee in anything beyond Hammer films.
The film, again like Batman Returns, seems to be an excuse for the filmmaker to unload all of the bric-a-brac that had probably been accumulating at the back of his mind for years. A likeable Trump daydream embodied by John Glover appears (though Dante’s goodwill doesn’t serve him here, Glover’s stoned Santa portrayal doesn’t jive with the cooperate hell the film has implied he created, the character should have closer resembled Glover’s shark in Scrooged); as well as a washed-up horror show host (Robert Prosky), harboring dreams of respectability, who lands a key interview with the talking “Brain” Gremlin (voiced, of course, by Tony Randall); we also get a spider gremlin; a bat gremlin (yes, the film elicits a laugh from a Batman parody); an electro-gremlin, and a starlet gremlin that is actually, and this is no mean feat, the ugliest of all the gremlins.
The film has the pleasure of a pinball machine, with Dante’s various hazards and inventions banging off one another in a series of vignettes of surprisingly even quality. It’s a testament to Dante’s mojo that he even ends his so-called children’s film on a triumphant note of bestiality without somehow compromising the overall good will of the endeavor.
I miss Joe Dante. He recently directed a doesn’t quite suck as much as the all others episode of Masters of Horror (though I didn’t see his second episode), and before that, Looney Tunes: Back in Action (that subtitle having the similarly inane on purpose ring of The New Batch), which, truthfully, I never caught either. Pauline Kael wrote, in a review of The Howling, that Dante seemed to be equal parts talent, amateur, style and flake. That’s precisely why his films are so engaging, he’s a talent with a child’s awe of genres many artists feel beneath them, capable of spinning his daydreams into an Americana rhapsody of monster-mania. Dante, similar to many of his characters, would seem to be an idealist from a past world, and I’m hoping that he hasn’t quite been swallowed yet. The horror film needs him. The comedy needs him. The bloated blockbusters could even use his teasing again, perhaps a third Gremlins, which I guess nowadays would be called something along the lines of G3. If anyone could make that idea tolerable it would be Joe Dante.
★★★½
April 9th, 2008 at 8:03 am
Fantastic observations on a film that I never would have thought deserved it. Always a pleasure to read your insights, Chuck. Bonus points for mentioning Pauline Kael, whom too many of these young whipper-snapper critics are unfamiliar with.
April 9th, 2008 at 8:29 am
I never cared for GREMLINS, thought it too mean-spirited and the script was beyond stupid (especially when the teacher doesn’t bother to turn the light on as he searches for the escaped gremlin) but you’re dead-on about G2 which I do like for its sheer bugfuckness. And Tony Randall.
Apropos, Joe Dante will be programming the New Beverly this month starting tonight (where two nights ago Tarantino sat near me and we got to wax about QT3). Dante is also showing the 4 hour version of his infamous MOVIE ORGY, a collage of trailers, clips and news that played to counterculture types in the 60’s thru early 70’s. You better head out soon to LA Chuck. You’re missing much film geekness.
April 9th, 2008 at 9:56 am
Thanks as always for the feedback Evan, glad to have you around these parts. I love Kael, and find myself thumbing through her 5001 Nights on a nearly daily basis. She set the bar very high.
Christian, funny you should say that, I dropped a few notes on your site this morning, one of which concerning my jealousy over your QT/Glenn Ford experience. I’m a small town guy who is, frankly, scared of LA, but you’re right: I need to get my head out of my ass.
I love both Gremlins movies equally for different reasons, the first one for some of the reasons you seem to reject it. I like that its this kids movie with Spielberg’s name that is actually a pretty fucked up horror movie that jerks you around between humor and horror with unsettling ease. The teacher turning on the light? Yeah that would make a lot of sense, but there’s no denying how scary that sequence is, and Billy’s discovery that the gremlins tricked him into feeding them is chilling. The picture has many, for me anyway, iconic horror moments, that theatre scene is wonderful, as is the final battle with Stripe.
I might have to re-watch that fucker tonight.
April 9th, 2008 at 10:28 am
And did you know the New Bev is showing GREMLINS 2 at midnight this week?
April 9th, 2008 at 10:42 am
I remember watching those movies when I was younger and being pretty scared. Watching them now, I think to myself, why were these movies ever marketed towards kids? I mean, yeah, the mutations in The New Batch are hilarious, but there are some gruesome scenes that are pretty inappropriate for kids. I guess it’s a sign of the times.
Movies made in the 80s had such lower ratings than movies today ever would have. The Indiana Jones movies, for example. A guy’s heart gets ripped out, a whole group of people get liquefied, and it’s all rated PG. That wouldn’t fly today. But at the same time, anything today that has a blow to the head gets an immediate R rating. It’s a weird dichotomy and probably deserves more research, albeit someone with more motivation than me.
Great review of Gremlins. I knew it was able to hold it’s own, but I never thought it could be talked about in such a way as to give it validity. Well done.
April 9th, 2008 at 10:45 am
Justin, it was because of Indy and Gremlins that PG-13 came into play. Harlan Ellison wrote a scathing attack on GREMLINS in his indispensable book of film reviews WATCHING.
April 9th, 2008 at 11:16 am
Thanks for reminding me of Watching Christian, I tried to find something that would give me an idea of what Ellison wrote of Gremlins and couldn’t find much, except
“suffers from the dreaded Jerry Lewis Syndrome: it vacillates between a disingenuous homeliness and an egomaniacal nastiness.”
Ouch. I certainly don’t wish to take Ellison on, particularly on the subject of fiction, but I just don’t see how you can entirely deny the force of Gremlins, the reckless id of it, though (obviously) I can’t say much until I read the review. I lifted that quote from the Wikipedia page devoted to Watching, for what its worth.
April 9th, 2008 at 11:19 am
I have been looking forward to your prolonged Gremlins II discourse since yesterday. Very entertaining.
Since this conversation has inevitably shifted to Gremlins (the first batch)…
The part in Gremlins where Kate tells Billy how she found out about Santa Claus has always haunted me.
April 9th, 2008 at 11:37 am
Ellison didn’t like it because of that Santa Claus scene in a film aimed primarily at children (and he really hated THE HOWLING too. While part of me loves the “reckless id” of the first one, I too was bothered by the sadism in film and the audience more than anything.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Christian now you’ve got me curious, what was Ellison’s beef with Howling? And I understand (and appreciate) what you and Ellison are saying, but I treasure that irresponsibility, and I was one of the kids these critics were seeking to protect. I was five when Gremlins hit the theatres, and I loved it. I would also be curious as to your thoughts on Howling. I’m wondering what Dante himself thinks of the first Gremlins, his approach in 2 could imply that he agrees with you and Ellison.
And thanks Justin, I was up on my Gremlins high horse and almost forgot about you.
April 9th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I saw HOWLING opening nite and fell in love. I’m a big Dante fan I just never warmed to GREMLINS. Tho I love scenes in it. Particularly the kitchen attack.
I don’t agree with Harlan at all on THE HOWLING, he just thought it was relishing in the gore and female violence. And his review on GREMLINS runs two columns! He’s merciless on poor Joe. But he did like INNERSPACE (my personal Dante favorite). Ellison really goes after Spielberg for producing a lot of these similar films like YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES etc. Tough but good stuff.
April 9th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
I’m a big BURBS fan myself. I think that is more of a personal thing. I know a lot people don’t like that one.
Interesting you mention INNERSPACE, I remember seeing that as a kid and hating it. I might have to revisit that one.
April 9th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Reading your thoughts on some of these older favorites is a real treat, Chuck. This is an awesome choice (and “G3″ is hilariously so true as a 2008 title). I didn’t know anything about the production background on this, and I haven’t given enough thought to Joe Dante’s filmography in whole. I love Innerspace, too, Christian.
April 12th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
Went to one of Joe Dante’s screenings last night at the New Bev. A truly nice guy and we all had a lovely time. My full report is on my blog.
And Dick Miller in the flesh! Walter Paisley lives!
April 14th, 2008 at 8:10 am
Great to hear Christian. Read and enjoyed your blog entry and hope to see more.
April 15th, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Somebody taped Dante’s q&a for HOLLYWOOD BLVD and you can hear me asking him about Corman at the start of this:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=qLr3Vk8iuNE